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Authors: Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

Tags: #Superpowers

Supernormal (7 page)

BOOK: Supernormal
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Ch. 7

 

She made it to Brody’s before puking.  Up it all came—blood and meat and fur and bones.  In deep, vicious heaves that wracked her whole body.  It was almost punishment enough.

At least she made it to the trashcan.

He said he was psychic. 

She was going to have to tell Brody.  Her fingers dug into the rim of the trashcan, bending the metal like taffy.  Christ Almighty, she was going to have to tell Brody.  About the rabbit.   About the boy.  All of it.  And Brody was going to have to report it.  Ashley spat out some more blood.  That tasted like some of hers.  Those bones had been jagged.

He said he would stop her.

How?  It was stupid to think he could, stupid to want to think it.  He had to be, what, one-fifty soaking wet, and she could take that in her sleep.  It was a joke.

Except he stopped her in Paco’s.  He knew, and he stopped her.  Just by looking at her.

Christ, she was so sick of this.  All of it.  Sick of always being on edge, of always having to pull herself back, watch herself—
always
—because the one second she didn’t…  So she wrapped the reins around her hands so tight they would never break free, ‘til she couldn’t remember what it was like not to feel tense or tired or empty.

It was almost a relief, having to tell Brody.  Brody’d call Director Cole—he had to call, had to.  And that would be it.  It
was
a relief.  She wanted it to be over.  Better for it to be this way, to be her choice in a way.  Better to just stop wasting everyone’s time.

But when she told Brody, he just got a shovel and some gloves and a plastic trash bag.

“Aren’t you…?”  Ashley swallowed and tried to control her voice.  “You have to report this.”

Brody leaned back on his heels and gave her a measured look.  “Why would I do that?”

“Because—”  It was hard to look at him.  Hard saying it.  Saying it meant she let him down.  “I did it—”

“I know what you did.”

“It’s happening.  I’m going wild.  I can’t—I
won’t
hurt—”

“Let’s get this straight, Ash,” Brody said, and he sounded so genuinely angry it rocked her.  “You are not in charge.  Neither is Proom, and neither is that damn agency that hired him.  This is my home and you’re under my roof, which means I say what happens and when.  Got it?” Ashley nodded, and the anger on his face settled into determination.  “Now.  Let’s go clean up your mess.”

So they marched back on the beach with the shovel and the trash bag.  And when they got there—no rabbit.

“This is the place,” Ashley said before Brody could ask.  She could still smell the rabbit.  She could still smell him.  Sawdust and sweat and mint—

Ashley tried not to think about it.

She started sniffing.  The thing couldn’t have gotten far.  It hadn’t exactly been in a position to hop off on its own.  The smell was still so clear, it wouldn’t be hard to…  Ashley crouched down, letting her nose lead—

“Two legs, Ashley,” Brody reminded her.

Ashley bounced up onto the balls of her feet.  “It’s here.”  She kicked a small pocket of fresh-turned sand.  “He buried it.  Why would he bury it?”

“Probably didn’t want to cart it to the trash with his bare hands,” Brody said.  He tossed Ashley the shovel.  She snatched it out of the air.

“Why get rid of it at all?”

“Maybe he didn’t want anyone else coming along and seeing it.  He seems like a nice boy, probably something he’d do.  Dig.”

Seems like a nice boy.  Ashley’s stomach plummeted.  “You know him?”

“Redhead, psychic.”  Brody regarded at her for a second, then said, “That’s Meg’s nephew.”

Ashley slammed the shovel into the sand.  He’d gone down about a foot, but in her present mood, she got it in one strike.  Brody held out the trash bag and she tipped it in then checked to make sure they hadn’t missed any stray pieces.

Meg’s nephew.  Didn’t matter if Proom killed her.  Meg would.

 

Meg didn’t knock.  Meg never knocked.  She had a key, but mostly Brody left his door unlocked.  If anyone were actually stupid enough to break in, well, Ashley knew Brody’d just consider that entertainment.

“All right, out of the way,” Meg said, lugging in a box.  She set it on the counter with a thunk.  Ashley waited, for the knife, or the rolling pin, whatever Meg would throw at her first.  But Meg was still smiling, still relaxed, as she pulled the cutting board off a bottom shelf.  “There’s more in the car.  Would you mind giving Cam a hand?”

Ashley froze, not sure who Meg was talking to—it couldn’t be her—‘course not.  But Brody automatically headed out the door, and Ashley relaxed slightly.  Meg kept talking, but Ashley had no idea what she was saying.  She was listening to Brody’s baritone and the calm, careful, measured voice that was getting closer by the second.  Ashley debated making a run for it.

Except Brody came back then, a box tucked under his arm, holding the screen door open with the other hand.  Cam was one step behind.  He’d showered—Ashley could smell the soap on his skin.  She risked one quick glance.

Something was off about his neck; it was covered in pale, flesh-colored blotches that didn’t quite match his skin.  And then her brain caught up, and her stomach twisted into a hot pit.  Makeup.  So much makeup.

The shame was like gravity.  It crushed her.  It took conscious effort to turn away, feel hand over hand on the chairs to put the table between them.  She heard the action around her as if it was happening in someone else’s house.  Meg’s murmur of thanks.  A dull thud as Brody set his box on the table.  Brody’s voice, asking, “You bring the whole damn fridge?”

“It ain’t wise to mock the lady who’s making you dinner.”  Ashley heard the
swish

clunk
of cabinets opened and closed one after another.  “Brody.”

“Yes, ma’am?”  Brody clapped a hand on Ashley’s shoulder, guided her to a chair at the table.  Ashley didn’t want to sit, but she didn’t really want to stand either.  So she sat.

“What happened to all your seasonings?  Don’t give me that wide-eyed innocent look, I bought them for you, I came here and put them away myself.”

Brody stayed there, standing by her.  Between her and Cam.  Did he see it?  Did he see what she did?  Again.  “We don’t need all that fancy stuff.”

“You don’t need black pepper.  Salt.”

“I plead the fifth.”

There was the crack and hiss of a soda bottle opening.  “Glasses?” Cam asked.

“Do we have glasses?” Brody asked Meg.  “We usually drink straight out of the tap.”

“Yes, you’re savages, isn’t it hilarious?  Top right cabinet, sugar.”

Then Cam was there, a glass of soda in hand.  Ashley looked up at him blankly.  “Ginger ale.  I hear it helps with a sore stomach.”

“Ashley’s stomach is sore?” Meg turned around, mother hen activated.

Ashley watched Cam.  “Always.”

Meg launched into a spiel about
stress
and
tension
and the old, familiar
you don’t eat enough.
  Cam leaned across the table to hand her the glass.  Their fingers brushed, and Ashley flinched.  The glass shattered in her hand like spun sugar.  Soda splashed over the table and soaked her clothes.

The scent of blood almost set her on lockdown, but it was her blood, so she managed to hold on.  She was shaking, hard, and Brody had a hand on her shoulder, just in case.  She looked at Cam.  He shook his head.

Ashley tried to relax.  At least she tried to not tense.  She had to work her way down, muscle by muscle.

“You’re bleeding,” Brody said quietly as Cam and Meg mopped up the shards and soda.

She was.  A sliver of glass gleamed up from the red pooling in her hand.

“Is it bad?”  The next second Cam had taken her hand in both of his, stretching it open so he could examine the palm.  Brody kept his hand on her shoulder, in case Ashley moved.  She didn’t.  She barely let herself breath.  “Looks like a tricky one, too.  Anybody have any tweezers?”

“I have some in my purse,” Meg said, her voice low, her eyes on Ashley.

“Stay away from me,” Ashley choked, but Cam kept his hands on her, flicked his blue eyes up to hers.

“You’re not going to do anything,” he said.

“I said
stay away from me
,” and she jerked her hand back, ripped the shard out, and took the stairs four at a time.

 

She seriously considered just climbing out the window and staying away ‘til they left. 

She heard them downstairs.  The
swik, swik, swik
of Meg slicing vegetables.  Brody’s questions to Cam—the ones everybody asked when someone new moved into town. 
How are you liking it here?
and shit like that.  The soft
whumpf
and the scent of gas when Meg turned on the oven.  The comfortable teasing between Brody and Meg.

Ashley tugged on a dry pair of shorts and her favorite T-shirt, realizing for the first time how worn and faded it looked.  There was a hole in the shoulder she hadn’t noticed before, where the seam was pulling apart.

Footsteps, and then a knock on the door.  It swung open easily—Brody didn’t believe in locks, just privacy—and Cam held up Band-Aids and a bottle of peroxide.

“I’m fine,” she said, but he came in and settled on the floor next to her. And, when he reached for her hand, “
Don’t touch me.
”  Ashley forced herself to take a breath.  “I don’t like to be touched.”  Not after the years of lab coats and rubber gloves.

Cam held out the peroxide for her.  “That was a nasty cut.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Don’t you want a Ninja Turtles Band-Aid?”  He shook the box.  “They’re glow-in-the-dark.”

She watched him for a moment, and then uncurled her hand to show him.  The wound was already a faint pink line.

Cam took it in, his gaze traveling up to her elbow, following the thin scar that circled her wrist and cut straight down the middle of her arm.  “So that’s what I felt.”  She must have looked confused, because he explained, “This afternoon, on the beach.  Felt like a seam.”

Ashley snatched her arm back, tucking it against her body.

He gave her a measured look.  “It’s not going to go away if we close our eyes and pretend it never happened.  Trust me, I know.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“All right, then, don’t.  It’s still true.  C’mon.”  He got to his feet.  “Pizzas are almost ready.”

“I’m not hungry.”  Which was a lie.  She was always hungry.

“Coward.”


Yes
,” she said savagely.  “You would be, too.”

Cam regarded her, his eyes searching her face.  “Yes, I would.”  He held out his hand.  She heard Meg tip the oven open, felt the heat blossom up from below-stairs, and her room filled the savory scent of cheese and baking bread.  Ashley took a hard breath, and then pushed herself past Cam and down the stairs.

 

Ch. 8

 

After dinner, Meg and Brody settled in the living room with a couple of beers to watch TV.  The actual program didn’t matter, though Ashley knew Meg liked the ones about secret agents and military action heroes because the inaccuracies set Brody’s teeth on edge.  What mattered was the faded old couch, so worn it seemed to sink around Brody and Meg, rather than the other way around, and the way they talked, and the way they didn’t have to talk, not always.  Ashley liked to sit in sometimes, to watch them, and let the ebb and flow of conversation wash over her, and pretend to be a part of it.  But tonight had been a little too much.  So she escaped to the back porch.

It was a nice night.  Sugar Beach saw a lot of nice nights, full of soft air and moonlight.  It gleamed along the white crests of waves.  The night was never completely silent, not with her hearing, but it was quiet.  Plus the dark was easier on her eyes.  She’d grown to like nights here.  She hadn’t thought she would.  She didn’t want to.  It would make it harder when she had to go back.

Ashley heard his footsteps in the hallway.  Then there was a pause, and the screen door creaked open.  Cam crossed to her, a bowl in each hand.  “Dessert?”

“Ice cream?”

“Gelato.”

Ice cream.
  Ashley took it, careful not to touch.  She expected him to head back inside, but he didn’t.  Instead he crossed to the deck railing to look out at the ocean.

Ashley tried not to look at him.  She forced herself to focus on hammy dialogue and dramatic music coming from the TV, on the ice cream, the way it tasted cold and sweet and smooth on her tongue.

He didn’t try to talk.  Thank god.  Too many people tried to talk, and she was too exhausted to fake normal.

But he was paying attention, even though he pretended not to, because as soon as she set her bowl aside he came over and handed her his.  She hesitated for a second, then thought, Fuck it, and took the bowl.

“Can I ask why you did it?”

Ashley swallowed, and let the spoon rattle into the bowl.  She wasn’t hungry anymore.  “No.”

He looked at her for a long moment, but he didn’t say anything.  As if that were enough.  She said no, and he didn’t.  It made her feel a little unsteady.

“More?”  He nodded at her bowl.

“It startled me.”  She startled herself, saying it.  “I didn’t mean to.  It bolted and I was…on edge.  I react—I don’t react well—it’s a long story.”

Cam snagged the deck chair next to her.  “Do you ever take off your sunglasses?”

“No,” Ashley said.  Which was a lie.  She did in the house, usually, after the sun went down.  Brody could be counted on to keep the lights off, and she got sick of seeing the world through scratched lenses.  “The light hurts my eyes.”

He raised an eyebrow.  The only light in the house was the dim flicker of the TV through the window, and the few candles Brody lit for company’s sake.

“My eyes are sensitive,” she explained.

“Sensitive enough to need sunglasses at night.  More surgery?”

Ashley went very still.

He didn’t look at her, just kept staring out across the beach.  “The scars on your arms.  They’re too clean to be by accident.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“There’s a shocker.  Do you want to take a walk?” he asked suddenly.  “It’s darker out there.”

“No.”  It burst out of her, sharpened by surprise.

Cam waited a moment.  “‘No, you don’t want to take a walk?’  Or, ‘No, it’s not darker out there?’”

“No,” Ashley said, and Cam nodded.  Just accepting it.  Again.  “We didn’t do too well on the beach last time.”

“No,” Cam agreed.

But his eyes were so blue, even through her sunglasses.  And she did like to walk the beach at night, every now and again when Brody let her.  Liked the way the sand slipped through her toes like silk.  So she said, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Cam said, then nodded at the back door. “We should tell them.”

“Brody knows.”  He would have stopped her by now if he thought it was a bad idea.

She headed down the steps to the beach, and Cam went with her.

 

They picked their way through the dunes, down to the open beach.  A breeze was coming off the water, cool enough to prickle her skin.  Brody lived on a quiet part of the island, set back from other houses, which meant the beach here was abandoned by this time of night.

Or should have been.  Ashley held back when Cam made to head north.  “Can we go this way?” she asked, nodding in the opposite direction.  “There’s people back there.”  Ashley saw him raking his eyes over the sand.  “They’re down a bit.  I can hear them,” she confessed.  His eyebrows rose, and she added, “And smell them.”

She expected…well, no, she hadn’t expected jokes, actually.  She didn’t know him, at all, really, but he didn’t seem the type.  So she wasn’t surprised when he simply turned around and strolled the other way.

They walked in silence at first.  Ashley took care to keep a safe distance between them; she probably overestimated a bit, but best to play it safe, and if Cam noticed anything he didn’t say.  It felt strange to walk on the beach, slow enough that she could feel the fine grains of sand against her feet.  Cam had an easy, long-legged stride, and she had to concentrate to keep pace with him.

She checked to make sure he wasn’t looking, twice.  Then slipped off her sunglasses.

It took her a second to work her eyelids open.  The world gleamed silver in the moonlight, so bright and clear that even with the moon half behind a cloud her eyes watered.  She blinked rapidly until her eyes adjusted.  Every time, it still amazed her.  It was like she had been blind before.  Ashley glanced at Cam, and the moonlight made his hair look like fire, made the freckles on his skin stand out.  She hadn’t realized there were so many of them.

For someone who’d made such a big fuss out of this, he was watching her quite casually.  “So that’s what you look like.”

She shrugged, hooking her glasses through a belt loop.

“I’d wondered.  You hide behind them all the time—”

“I need
them—”

“Because your eyes are sensitive,” he finished.  “Hearing, too.  You’re wearing earplugs,” he said when she shot a look at him, “and you still managed to pick up on those people down the beach.”

“You have psychic visions,” she tossed back. 

He nodded, conceding.  “So.  Hearing, vision.  Sense of smell.  Speed, strength—”

“I work out.”

“—your hand healed—”

“It was a scratch, I wasn’t—”

“—you do know people don’t usually have pupils like that?”


Stop. 
Stop it.  Don’t try to figure me out,” she snarled, and turned on him.  “Why are you even here?”

“My parents fucked.  Same as you.”

Ashley tripped over her own feet.  “No, that’s—that’s not what I meant,” she sputtered.

“Obviously.  Otherwise we’d be siblings.”

She just said it.  “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Well, I don’t like to think about it.”

“Of
me
,” she demanded.

Cam quirked an eyebrow.  Christ, he looked like Meg when he did that.  “No.”

He said it simply.  Like it was simple.  She couldn’t breathe.  “I
hurt
you.”

“Maybe I like it rough.”

“Maybe you’re an idiot.”

“No argument there.”

Ashley choked on a mixture of frustration and anger and what might have been anger.  She made herself stop, swallow it down, until she could breathe again.  “Cam—I’m sorry.  I…have issues.”

“Yeah, you do.”  Which made her laugh.  It felt strange in her chest.  “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s
not
.  If you’re—if you’re really—”

“I am.”

“—then you saw—”  He’d seen.  Ashley swallowed hard, fighting for calm.  Or something like it.

“I saw what you might do.  What you didn’t do.”

Her hands clenched, so tight her nails cut into her palms.  “You have no idea—”

“Yes, I do.  I saw you twice now, and twice now I saw you stop.”  He turned his face to the ocean, watching the waves crash in.  “I see a lot of ‘almost’s.’  A lot of ‘meant to’s’ and ‘maybe’s’ and ‘want to’s.’  I’ve gotten good at filtering a lot of that out, but still.  It’s part of the job.  For every choice we make, there’s one we didn’t make.  Or two, or ten.”  He looked back at her, and his eyes were hard.  “So I do know what I’m talking about, Miss Garrett, when I say what we mean to do, or want to do, or think about doing—it doesn’t matter.  What matters is what we do.”

“I did hurt you,” she replied.  “I didn’t mean to, and I didn’t want to, and I am sorry, but I did.  I’m sorry,” Ashley said again, feeling it in every bone.  “It’s…not easy for me to be gentle.  It’s easy for me to hurt people.”

“Get in line.”  For the first time, he sounded angry.

“It’s not the same thing.”  It wasn’t.  She forced herself to look at his throat again.  In the silver light, the makeup stood out even more.  It made her angry.  She clung to that anger; it was better than fear, better than shame.  “You have no idea—”

“Yes, I do,” he said, and the matter-of-fact way he said it was brutal.

“I put a man in a coma.”  She said it to hurt him.  Whatever this truce was that they had going on, he wasn’t supposed to be on her side.  “He’s not ever going to wake up, and if he does he’s not ever going to walk again, because I broke his spine.  I ran at him too fast, we landed wrong, and… ”  And she still heard the snap sometimes in her sleep.  “It was easy.”

“Did he deserve it?”

That wasn’t what she expected.  It hurt more.  “No.”

“Then why?”

She could’ve told him the story, but she didn’t want to remember.  Not tonight, not ever.  She shouldn’t have brought it up.  So Ashley just told him the truth.  “He was in my way.”

It took her a moment to realize they’d stopped moving.  That she was just standing there, the icy water rolling over her bare feet, trailing wet sand through her toes as it pulled back out.  And he was standing there, waiting for her.  When she finally managed to look up, to look him in the face, he was watching her.  “Go ahead,” she said.  “Say it.”

“I’m sorry.”

It was not what she was expecting.  The way he said it, quiet and real, it hooked into her chest and almost brought her to her knees.  Ashley blinked and had to swallow, hard.  “So am I.”  She swallowed again.  “It’s…”  It’s not the worst thing I’ve done.  But she didn’t say that.  She barely knew him.  She didn’t trust him.  She didn’t want to tell him that.  “It’s getting late.  We should go back.”

 

 

 

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